I don’t quite understand. If they allowed a .xxx domain for sex sites, would anyone be able to buy a .xxx (like I buy bunnies.xxx while some other guy buys chickenfight.xxx) or would only the one entity be able to use the .xxx (like I buy bunnery.xxx and now no one can use .xxx)?

“With the stock of available web addresses under the current IPv4 protocol set to run out by 2011, ICANN has been under pressure to find a solution for burgeoning demand.

In theory, an infinite number of new domain names could be born”

I’ve got 0 familiarity with IPv4 protocol, but the idea that there is a practical limit to the number of names surprises me. With 26 letters and 10 numbers there are over 2 BILLION combinations if you limit site names to 6 characters. Granted, a lot of those are just random, but I’ve seen site names as long as 50+ characters (which is over 10^77 combinations).

I have any objections to more domain names, but the the need puzzles me.

In the meantime, I’m off to corner the market on .bank, .broker, .beer and as many other generics I can get my hands on. My fortune awaits!

Onion, I think your first example is the closest to the mark. Lotsa people can get .xxx (or any .NAME) with various words in front. (chocolate mouse ice cream.fat and lard.fat for example) But I think no two sites could have the same word-ending combination (no two sites with “chocolate mouse ice cream.fat”)

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone conflate domain namespace expansion and IPv4/IPv6 before, but it’s wrong. It’s like saying that now that the phone company publishes listings in Chinese, we won’t need a new area code.

As far as selling new TLDs goes, I say, “Why not?” They stopped meaning anything at all years ago, when anyone could buy a name in .org or .net. Decadence!

.ca used to be administered quite strictly, to pick an example close to my heart, with provincial and municipal subdomains. There’s a certain nerdly glee evident in the Ontario Ministry of Education’s domain name, for instance, circa 1996: edu.gov.on.ca. I’m not saying that I entirely approve, because you’d probably have to go to X.400 to exceed it in terms of simultaneous formalism and unsightliness, but I do prefer it to the tin-eared, big-footed ignorance of a choice like “canada.com” (poetically illustrative of its owners’ shameless certainty that Canada ought to aspire to be an American business, mind you).